Monday, June 30, 2008

Inspired by other game jam events around the world, I'm planning (with a friend) to run a game jam sometime soon in Perth, Western Australia. We've had a few game companies set up shop here in the last year or so, and there should be plenty of talent around to sustain a short event.

I figure with the right web app, most things could take care of themselves! I started to prototype something in GAE, but it was a bit tedious, so I'll jump back into the familiar and efficient territory of Pylons for this small project.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

After an inspiring conversation with a colleague about our favorite game, Privateer, I was motivated to create a space ship simulation, controlled via 3 axis joystick.

I modeled the ship so it has two thrusters at the rear, which can pivot independently. I then apply separate forces to each thruster, which allows the ship to roll, and change pitch.

Unfortunately, the ship is extremely difficult to control. It would spin wildly, even with small amounts of thruster angle. The simulation only became workable when I added large amounts of torque dampening, and limited the thruster pivots to -+5 degrees.

Sunday, June 08, 2008

So, after years of procrastination, I'm building a game portal, for better or worse. At present I'm only intending to host my own games.

The decision I'm facing is whether to invest in google appengine, or not. My only concern is whether it's unnecessarily restricting my target audience, or whether it its actually supplying me with a read-made target audience.